Review by New York Times Review
I WANT to party with Katherine Taylor - either the flesh-and-blood Katherine Taylor, Fresno native, former Manhattan bartender and graduate of Columbia University's M.F.A. program, or Katherine Taylor, Fresno native, former Manhattan bartender, graduate of Columbia University's M.F.A. program and the heroine of Taylor's first novel, "Rules for Saying Goodbye." Why? Because Katherine Taylor the character likes to drink martinis, stay out late and flirt with inappropriate men, and Katherine Taylor the novelist makes no bones about the fact that her novel is autobiographical. This should come as no shock. First novels, especially coming-of-age novels, often are. In the best instances they are the work of a talented writer who has plucked a thread from her long-ago-woven web of obsessions and spun it into fiction. Spun it, ideally, into a character bigger than herself. But it's a dodgy gambit to give your hero your name. Too often this sort of meta-fiction device, breaking down the wall between fiction and nonfiction, devolves into a parlor game of trying to sort out what's real and true and what's not. When the writer is also a celebrity like Bret Easton Ellis, satirizing himself as Ellis does in "Lunar Park," or an author in the eye of a scandal, as David Leavitt was when he wrote his brilliant novella "The Term Paper Artist," it can be delicious fun. Likewise, it's handy when the plot is about authorship and the relation of author to reader - as in Jonathan Safran Foer's "Everything Is Illuminated." More commonly, though, and unfortunately as is the case here, it feels like a distraction. Given that I don't know Taylor - beyond what I've gleaned from her novel - and that you, the reader, don't either, unless, as it's revealed in her book, you attended the same tony boarding school in Massachusetts, lived on the Upper East Side or boozed at the Carlyle Hotel, the pleasure of that exquisite frisson created between the writer and the character on the page is regrettably absent. "Rules for Saying Goodbye" is split into four parts, each distinguished by a breakup. The first separation Katherine makes is from her parents and her two brothers in Fresno to attend sleep-away school. The remaining three concern Katherine's education in the rough lessons of romance, and we follow her as she bounces between bartending gigs and travels from New York to London to Rome to Brussels, each time on the arm of a promising new beau, two of them British and another she refers to almost exclusively as "the Italian." It's through these ill-fated love affairs that Katherine develops the "Rules for Saying Goodbye," of which there are 11. Among them: "Do not leave until he has mentioned two ex-girlfriends in casual conversation." "Leave if he starts writing songs about other people." And lastly, "Call a taxi." After all, one shouldn't take the bus. When Katherine isn't obsessing about her love life or trying to write her novel, she's fretting that "the interest on my capital isn't covering my rent, my superstar little brother is going to have to give me an allowance, and I can't even seem to stay employed as a bartender." Adding insult to injury, "I never learned how to smoke properly." Poor, poor darling. No doubt Taylor intends this to be read as satire. Bits like Katherine's not daring to abandon her rent-controlled apartment despite 10 years of death threats are amusing. But the quirky female friends, shoe adoration and dating of "insignificant" men feels overly familiar, especially considering that Candace Bushnell shopped this territory so long ago that after six seasons on HBO, "Sex and the City" is now three years deep into syndication. Even Katherine's snappy dialogue could have come from the mouth of Carrie Bradshaw. Responding to news that her parents never buried her childhood pet, Buttons, but dumped the dog in the garbage, she deadpans, "That's against sanitation laws." What's frustrating is that these kicky lines are so often mere asides, punches of irony that may entertain or titillate, but neither move the story forward nor illuminate the character of Katherine Taylor. Were Taylor to fully develop any number of the interesting plotlines she introduces - the mother's serious depression, which one day just seems to lift; the aunt's abuse of her teenage cousin, which is commented on, then ignored; the brain cancer of her best friend, the charming Clarissa, the gravity of which never seems to hit her - the novel might not feel like such a tease. After all, part of the joy of reading fiction is seeing writers explore ideas and write truthfully about life in a way they couldn't in nonfiction. Had Taylor not explicitly invited us to imagine her novel as autobiography, we wouldn't feel so cheated. But Taylor isn't completely withholding. She is willing to tell tales - just not on herself. At one point, for instance, she gleefully outs celebrities including David Byrne, Madonna, Tobey Maguire and Gwyneth Paltrow (who frequents her bar) as stingy tippers. It's unfortunate, given Taylor's obvious potential, that this bit of gossip is what finally resonates with the reader. And it's a shame that after we shadow our heroine from her first kiss to her first engagement, Katherine Taylor - both Katherine Taylors - are still strangers to us. Among the author's 'Rules for Saying Goodbye': 'Do not leave until he has mentioned two ex-girlfriends in casual conversation.' Elissa Schappell is editor at large of Tin House magazine, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of "Use Me," a novel.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Katherine Taylor's debut features a narrator named Katherine Taylor, whose rebellious mother sends her from Fresno to Manhattan's fictional Claver prep at age 13. The madcap, fast-forward shenanigans that follow read like Auntie Mame a la A.M. Homes. Rich Claver friend Page gets pregnant and develops a coke habit. Katherine gets a Columbia M.F.A. but lacks drive, tending bar at an exclusive hotspot while trying not to deal with her abrasive mom. Katherine's brother, Ethan, a gay actor, rooms with her in her cheap uptown digs until he becomes "the face of Diet Coke." There's ambivalent romance that involves a move to London. Claver friend Clarissa gets cancer as she turns 30. When a nutty neighbor threatens to kill Katherine, police advise vacating, but "giving up a rent-controlled apartment to save your life is as ridiculous as living in Queens." While a lot of what Katherine does is familiar, Taylor is a superb satirist, eviscerating everyone in her Katherine's path. In the middle of the novel she drops a list of "rules for saying goodbye"; it's extraneous, even precious, and it's the best thing in the book: e.g., "Once you are gone, be gone for good." Taylor manages to make worn New York yarns feel fresh again. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The protagonist of Taylor's first novel shares the author's name, but that is the only self-reflexive element of the otherwise straightforward narrative. The fictional Katherine, raised in Fresno, CA, is sent to a Massachusetts boarding school at the age of 12, and the novel then follows her into her early thirties. Taylor tends to skip months or years and her detailed scenes tend to be arranged in a disjointed, roundabout way. Both the book's structure and Katherine ultimately prove rather frustrating. Blessed with family money, excellent connections, and alleged potential, she spends most of the novel wallowing in passivity. Alternately controlled by her family's desires and her badly chosen beaus, she is characterized by a vague depression and an inertia that she repeatedly attempts to repair via new lovers, new friends, and new cities. Though this is being pushed as a "New York" novel, Katherine spends most of her time in the city plotting her escape from it, and Manhattan is not captured in a notable manner. While at times Taylor beautifully conjures the unmoored and uncertain feelings of young adulthood, her protagonist/narrator is often too unlikable to garner the reader's sympathy. Optional for large fiction collections.-Amanda Glasbrenner, Chicago (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An episodic clone of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, tracing the journey of a woman (named Katherine Taylor) from adolescence to adulthood. Katherine's mother is ill-suited to her prosaic middle-class existence in Fresno. Between bouts of depression, she thinks to send her two youngest children to a tony East Coast prep school, while the oldest, Richard, stays at home dealing with an anger management problem. Precocious Katherine is a consummate drifter who seems to latch onto various people and situations, starting at boarding school with Page, a wealthy, pubescent cocaine addict who introduces Katherine to New York via visits to her grandmother's Park Avenue apartment. Eventually, Katherine sees through Page's veneer and befriends Clarissa, slightly lower on the socialite ladder, but perhaps more in tune with reality. Taylor skips over Katherine's college years, focusing instead on her aimless, 20-something New York existence, where her next crutch becomes her younger brother, Ethan, now a gay aspiring actor who takes up residence in her rent-stabilized Upper East Side apartment. The two try to block out their increasingly dysfunctional family life back in Fresno (Richard does a stint in jail while their mother obsessively builds a vacation house on Lake Michigan) while drifting through jobs and relationships. Men take Katherine even farther from her roots, to London and then to Rome, but she continues to find herself feeling homeless, or at least homesick, and after she breaks off an engagement, she and Ethan resettle in a place they once thought unlikely: Los Angeles, a mere three hours from the Fresno they left so long ago. Taylor relays Katherine's life in jolting spurts, making it difficult to emotionally commit to her, as well as to the characters that drift in and out of her life. Melissa Bank did it better. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
